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The Late Movies: Mel Brooks

Each year, the Kennedy Center honors a group of legendary performers who have contributed to the arts.Â This morning, they announced that Mel Brooks would join Robert DeNiro and Bruce Springsteen, among others, in the 2009 class.Â For tonight's Late Movies, here are a few clips of Mel Brooks, who brought us such classics as The Producers, Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs.

Here is a clip of Mel on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson telling a story of meeting Cary Grant.

Brooks often appeared in the films he wrote and directed. Here he is as Moses in The History Of The World, Part 1, receiving the 15 Commandments.Â Yes, that is Charlton Heston doing the voiceover.

Mel Brooks alongside Carl Reiner doing a bit called the 2000 Year Old Man. Hard to imagine, but Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows included the writing talents of Brooks, Reiner and Neil Simon among others. Later, when the show morphed into Caesar's Hour, Woody Allen joined them.

Mel Brooks doing his best Sinatra impersonation from his Alfred Hitchcock parody High Anxiety.

And finally from To Be Or Not To Be, here's Mel doing a rap parody about Nazi Germany.

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Also on Mental Floss:

DID YOU KNOW? Marlon Brando hated memorizing lines so much that he posted cue cards everywhere to help him get through scenes.
He even asked for lines to be written on an actress's posterior. (That request was denied.)